What alignment is House?

[iwatt]

House isn't evil, but he isn't good either.

In this season he wakes up a coma patient ti get soem answers out of him. John Larroquete, the awakened veggie, finally get's soem answers out of House, and it's clear that his motivation for medicine is all about been right. It isn't about helping people.

And he is Chaotic becuase he doesn't aknowledege any authority over him but himself.

 

[Mark Plemmons]

Since we are doing a whole lot of these threads, what alighnment is House? I'd say CN, since he is erratic, doesn't like rules, and lives for his own amusement, though the fact that said amusement usually helps people is still a positive for him.

Yeah, Chaotic Neutral's definitely the first thing I thought of as well.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

The same as Gazebo.

 

[S'mon]

In ninefold alignment, he's CG. In L-N-C he's N.

 

[Mercule]

I'd meant to include this with my previous post:

In a Dragon article (I forget the number, but it's 1E timeframe) I have about barbarians, it explicitly states both that most barbarians tend to be chaotic and that they are, as a rule, incredibly honor-bound and live by a strong code of conduct.

Having a personal code of conduct is not the same thing as being lawful.

 

[Technik4]

The funny thing about trying to give someone's alignment from a TV show or whatever is that they aren't real people - they are just characters. Of course, so are D&D characters, but consistency is the key to alignments (and even then they are sticky).

I've known people who I consider Chaotic to believe they act in a logical manner. Just because House says he likes logic doesn't negate his Chaotic-ness. The problem with some peoples' definitions of Lawful vs Chaotic is that they leave only the insane on the side of Chaos.

Chaotic people can hold down jobs, vote in elections, pay their bills (mostly on time), and all the rest as lawful people. The difference is that those Chaotic people (since not every Chaotic person does those things) wish things were different and is willing to break a law if it seems necessary (for a Good person, to do Good, for an Evil person, if the risk is worth the reward). A lawful person would not break a law if they could help it (or if the law conflicted with their own personal set of rules/laws or internal sense of order).

Of course I think that alignments are a bit like genetics, with dominant sides and recessive sides. A Cg would act differently than a cG for instance.

 

[Slife]

Neutral Snarky, with good tendencies.

 

[Celebrim]

Since we are doing a whole lot of these threads, what alighnment is House? I'd say CN, since he is erratic, doesn't like rules, and lives for his own amusement, though the fact that said amusement usually helps people is still a positive for him.

(Other alignments on that show: Foreman: NE, Chase: NE, Cameron: LG, Cuddy: LG, Wilson: NG)

I think you may be confusing alignment with personality. You can be lawful good and be a stingy miser. You can be chaotic evil and be a stingy miser. Similarly, you can be cynical and abrasive and still be lawful good, and you can be cynical and abrasive and be chaotic evil. How you manifest those personality traits and where you put your priorities when they clash determines your alignment.

Similarly, to knock down some other straw men, lawful doesn't necessarily mean 'subservient to the dominate socio-political order' and chaotic doesn't mean 'rebelling against the dominate socio-political order'. As a general trend, those things might be more likely found with one alignment or the other, but its not that hard to think of contrary examples. For example, if the dominate socio-political alignment is chaotic evil, a lawful good can be in rebellion to that in order to restore what he believes the right alignment is. Or, two lawfuls from different cultures can be in conflict over what the lawful social norms should be.

I've not seen enough of House to have an opinion on the alignment of any of the characters. But I think that the way to judge House's alignment would be to look at how he behaves when he's under pressure. If he's constantly sacrificing himself for the sake of others, there is a good chance that he's actually lawful and that his 'rule breaking' streak means that he thinks the rules are wrong. If the set of rules he operates by are knowable and something which he can be externally critiqued by an observer, and if holds to these rules even at a personal cost, and if he's answerable to the society that holds them (for example the Hippocratic Oath and the society of doctors) then he is lawful and his problem is with sets of laws which he feels are in conflict with that. If on the other hand, he has a personal standard which is not knowable, if he cannot be critiqued by an observer as to whether or not he's holding to a code, and if he changes his own standards according to the circumstance, then he probably is chaotic.

 

[Hussar]

I take a slightly different tact.

Alignment is simply a way of keeping score. It's applied after the fact and is a simple shorthand description of what you can expect in the future. Intention plays very little part (not a zero part, but a small one) in determining the alignment of the character. Just because you thought it was a good thing to do does not excuse you from slaughtering puppies, to make a straw man.

House consistently flaunts authority, must be forced to do the work he is expected to do, and consistently ignores anything which would constrain his actions. That screams CN to me. He isn't evil. He isn't out to hurt anyone, but, he's not particularly good either since he never really goes out of his way to help anyone. The only people he helps are the ones that interest him as a mental challenge.

Someone dying of leukemia would not merit the slightest attention from House, nor even the semblance of empathy. Someone dying of a mosquito bite would interest him and he would do everything he could to save that person. Not because he actually cares about the person as a person, but, because the person dying is an insult to his intellect.

He's entirely self absorbed, but, not malicious. CN.

 

[IamTheTest]

CE...Breaks rules (little and big) constantly and does what he does simply because it benefits him to do so...saving lives is just a side effect. I do love him though.